Europeans getting fatter than Americans

The proportion of overweight or fat men is higher in some European countries than it is in the US, experts said in a major analysis of Europeans’ expanding waistlines.

The International Obesity Task Force estimated that Finland, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Malta have all now exceeded the US’ 67% in overweight or obese males.

“The time when obesity was thought to be a problem on the other side of the Atlantic has gone by,” Mars Di Bartolomeo, Luxembourg’s Minister of Health, said yesterday.

In Greece, 38% of women are obese, compared with 34% in the US.

The report was released at the launch of the 25-nation EU’s plan for action on the problem in its member states.

The International Obesity Task Force, a global coalition of obesity scientists and research centres advising the EU, had previously estimated in 2003 that about 200 million of the 350 million adults living in what is now the EU may be overweight or obese.

However, a closer evaluation of the figures in the latest analysis indicates that may be an underestimate of the scale of the problem, according to the group.

Studies have shown that being even slightly overweight can dramatically increase the risk of certain diseases, such as diabetes. Obesity is also linked to heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes, respiratory disease, arthritis and some types of cancer.

“We can have disastrous effects from (obesity) on health and the national economy,” said EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou.

Up to 8% of the current health care costs in the EU can be attributed to the effects of being overweight or obese, he said.

To counter the worsening trend, the EU is banding together with the food and marketing industries, consumer groups and health experts, and it plans to assess national and industry efforts to counter the trend.

It is its monitoring of the food industry’s efforts that makes the EU’s approach to the obesity problem “totally novel”, said Philip James, chairman of the International Obesity Task Force, which advises governments around the world on how to tackle the problem.

The problem is not limited to the adult population.

The IOTF estimates that among the EU’s 103 million youngsters, the number of overweight children rises by 400,000 each year. More than 30% of children aged between 7 and 11 are overweight in Italy, Portugal, Spain and Malta.